City begins distributing 7.5 million free masks to New Yorkers

Police officers hand out face masks in Washington Square Park in Manhattan on Sunday, May 3. (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)

The city will distribute 7.5 million free masks and face coverings in all five boroughs on Monday, Mayor de Blasio said on Monday.

“Wherever you turn, you’re going to be offered a face covering, and it’s going to be on an ongoing basis for weeks to come to make sure that everyone has what they need,” Hizzoner said at a press conference.

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The city is giving away 5 million nonmedical masks and 2.5 million cloth face coverings at parks, public housing buildings, grocery stores, Education Department-run meal sites, Mitchell-Lama housing and other locations, the mayor said.

“These are the three-ply nonmedical masks. These are not the same as what our health care heroes use, but they really do help,” Hizzoner said while holding a sample at a desk in City Hall.

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A police officer hands out face masks in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, New York on Sunday, May 3. (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)

In an aside, he decried the country’s “throwaway culture” and said, “You can keep using it so long as it stays dry.”

The undertaking began as the city acquired enough personal protective equipment to last at “crisis levels” at hospitals and nursing homes for a week — the first time it’s been that well-supplied since March — de Blasio said.

He also detailed plans to meet Gov. Cuomo’s recently announced goal for all hospitals to have 90-day stockpiles of PPE, saying once the Health Department has bought or overseen the manufacture of 14 days’ worth of supplies, additional products will go into storage.

Mayor de Blasio, left, and FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro are pictured at FDNY EMS Station 4 on South Street in Manhattan on Monday, May 4. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

The massive mask maneuvering comes after the city distributed more than 100,000 pieces of the equipment over the weekend — drawing criticism for leaving out areas including South Brooklyn and the East Bronx.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who’d called on de Blasio to send masks to South Brooklyn, praised the 7.5-million mask initiative but said it should have come sooner.

“By doing this, we are finally catching up to say, ‘Every New Yorker regardless of their [economic level] deserves a mask,’ ” said Adams, an expected mayoral contender, adding that his office has distributed over 100,000 masks to Brooklynites.

People receive protective masks and bandannas as they are handed out in Prospect Park as face coverings become mandatory in many establishments on May 3, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

From the onset of the crisis, de Blasio and Cuomo have pleaded with the feds to send supplies to the Big Apple, and resorted to striking their own deals with manufacturers in the face of erratic help from the White House.

The mask program came as the virus continued its devastating toll through the weekend. But with a recent batch of technical indicators showing signs of improvement, Mayor de Blasio deemed Monday an “excellent day.”

He was referring to three metrics — new hospital admissions, the number of patients in intensive care units and the percentage of COVID-19 tests that come back positive — that are serving as benchmarks for when the city can start to return to normal life.

All three categories went down from Friday to Saturday, according to de Blasio. He previously said the city needs to see 10 straight days of declines or a steady downward trend over two weeks before some restrictions can be eased.

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